The Raleigh World: Four Months

Well, I sorta almost forgot to write anything about the 4-month mark of living in Raleigh. It’s been on my mind for the past couple of weeks, but it’s been a busy time getting my freelance business going.

#WeatherReportByVicster

We’re starting to experience summer-like weather: it’s been in the 90’s for the past few days, but the humidity hasn’t been too horrible (yet). We have had the random rain/thunder/lightning storms that come in, perform a quick routine, and then move on. We’re fortunate in the way that the apartment is situated that we don’t get a lot of direct sunlight until late in the afternoon, so I haven’t had to use the AC so far, which I’m sure is a bitter disappointment to Duke Energy shareholders. Despite my liberal use of sunscreen I have managed to get a couple of sunburns around my collar, on two separate occasions (left side a couple of weeks ago, right side last week). It’s not so easy to see where I’ve missed until I come inside and see random red patches.

We are also still in the middle of #PollenSeason. Although the pine trees are no longer spewing thick yellow clouds, grass and weed pollens have slid in to pick up the slack and test the effectiveness of every allergy remedy I can throw at my sinuses.

Doing My Patriotic Duty

On May 8th I voted for the first time in North Carolina. I still need to get myself signed up to volunteer to work at the polling stations. It’s been on my list of things I’d like to do for ages.

I VOTED

The Sporting News

I have also been to four North Carolina Courage matches so far this season1. I’ve been fortunate that the team has had a couple of ticket deals that made attending games possible for this bootstrap/startup/solopreneur. I knew I would enjoy the games because it’s soccer, but I have to admit to being taken aback at how much I enjoy them2. There are some really talented women in the National Women’s Soccer League and the Courage, in particular, are such a fun team to watch. They are currently undefeated and leading the NWSL. There is a very family-friendly atmosphere and I’ve met some really nice families at the games. If you’re in the Triangle you really should be going to these matches.

Denise O’Sullivan battles in the corner.Merritt Mathias is looking for the pass.

Business

As I mentioned, most of Month Four was spent kicking Victoria Klum Media into gear. I’ve been getting myself out and networking and even attended my first WordCamp. I really enjoyed the experience and learned a lot: I definitely plan to go next year.

After wrangling with CSS for the better part of a month, I finally completed the redesign of my home page. At last, I had a landing page that describes what’s on the shingle I’m hanging. However, during WordCamp, I realized that my web host didn’t have my site on the secure servers and needed to get that remedied ASAP. I was concerned that this might be a lot of rigmarole, which I didn’t have the time to deal with, but the web host said a migration to a managed, secure WordPress server is an easy-peasy 24-48 hour job.

What ACTUALLY happened was two weeks of Mercury-in-retrograde-level miscommunication and frustration, which resulted in having to merge my photo blog (Fresh Pixels) into this blog (or pay for two hosting plans) and, after being told I could just upload my custom index page (and the images and stylesheets it called) once the migration was complete, finding out that I can’t have the index page at all anymore.

I suppose there is something sort of zen about doing all of that creative work and re-learning CSS, only to have it wiped out, but right now the frustration is outweighing the learning experience. And it also means spending yet more time re-creating the page in WordPress because I had written it out specifically for the layout that I had designed.

And did I mention that all of this (including needing to redirect all of the urls for the photoblog AND this blog) went down just as I’m passing my website address around to potential clients? GOOD TIMES.

Faith, Love, and Kittehs

Through my yoga and meditation practice, though, I have set myself up well enough to work through those moments when it all feels overwhelming (ex: this past week) and make sure that I pause and celebrate even the smaller milestones. In the moments when I’m tempted to revert to old habits and patterns, I remind myself that I have brought myself through more change and growth in the past five months than I have in the past twenty years.

#DosGatosLocos are doing great. I’m grateful that the apartment stays cool so my boys don’t wilt in hot weather like they did back in Alameda. They went through an odd period a week or so ago, when they were suddenly into Jack Kerouac. Clancy went to the bookshelf and worked really hard to pull this book, so when we went to bed that night I read them a few poems3 until Charlie left the room and Clancy put his paw over my mouth.

When the cats choose the bedtime story.

In Month Five may I continue to navigate the path forward, avoiding all the potholes that I can but knowing that, should I stumble through one, I have what I need within me to get my feet back under me and keep moving forward.

Notes

1Two of those games are where I obtained the aforementioned sunburns.2And this has nothing at all to do with cheese fries!3I’m really terrible at reading poetry aloud.